‘Wish You Were Here’ Lets You Listen In, Sort Of, When You Miss the Big Show

Nobody likes missing out on the big gig, whether due to a prior commitment, lack of funds, or scarcity of tickets, as with the recent tours by Kraftwerk and Pulp.

Wish You Were Here, developed at Music Hack Day Sydney, is a simple web app that promises to alleviate some pain on the part of people who can’t attend the concert that their friend is currently enjoying.

“I’m working on a setlist sharer-slash-downloader,” explained developer Steven Thurlow, pictured above presenting his hack. “If you can’t make it to a gig and your friend can, they enter in the setlist as it happens, and you get to see what’s playing at the time.”

The app, which is not yet online, doesn’t let the sad sack who’s missing the show hear the live versions of the songs, which would present significant copyright hurdles, as cool as that would be. However, his web app does allow the listener to hear the album versions of the songs, in real-time, as they are played live.

“If you were here,” added Fuller, “you’d be listening to this right now. You’d feel wonderful or sad — either way.”

And although these shared setlists don’t play the music the way it sounded in the concert hall that night, they do share another thing with concerts, in that they disappear after a single day.

“It’s almost live,” said Thurlow, “because once it happens, it’s gone.”